Ryo sleeps lightly, slumped over his mother sleeping in her bed. Footsteps approach, but he chooses to remain still. A deep herbal fragrance tempered by woody smoke tickles his nostrils and only then does he crack an eye open.

“Dad…?”

“Just giving your mom her medicine today.”

Ryo sits up. He yawns, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes. “How come you’re so early today? You usually make her medicine in the evenings.”

“Why, can’t I be early for once?”

His mother stirs awake and smiles weakly. “Good morning boys.” She devolves into a coughing fit. Her hand comes away with flecks of blood and Ryo rushes to pass her a cloth.

“You’re early today, Akio,” his mother comments.

“Yes, now drink up, please.” His father tips the bowl as his mother drinks the medicine. Ryo watches, fascinated by the slightly pink-tinted concoction that will help her get better.

It’s just that…she still hasn’t recovered. It’d been over a month since she’d fallen ill, and he and Satori had been taking care of her while their father was at work. She’d shown no signs of getting better despite their father’s insistence that the medicine will work. To make matters worse, her vision seemed to be getting worse rapidly.

His father kisses his mother on the cheek before leaving for work. His mother lies back down, devolving into another coughing fit. “I’m sorry, my little koi fish,” she whispers.

Ryo brushes some hair away from her eyes and changes the washcloth on her forehead. “I love you, Mom,” he says. He always says it everyday now.

His mother smiles at him, tenderly cupping his face. “I love you too, Ryo. Both you and Satori.”

“Hi Mom.”

Ryo turns to see Satori standing by the doorway, carrying a bowl of miso soup. She carries it inside, setting it down near her mother’s bedside table.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Satori. It’s your birthday today, isn’t it?”

“It’s okay, Mom. You’re sick. Just get better, please?” Satori blows the soup and holds the spoon out. Their mother makes an effort to sit up and allows Satori to feed her, all while rubbing soothing circles across Ryo’s palm.

A few sips. Then some more. Eventually, Satori’s arms tremble and she accidentally spills a bit of the soup on her mother’s hand.

“Ah!” Their mother cries and Satori quickly places the bowl down to the side.

“I’m so sorry!” Satori grabs a cloth and begins to wipe the soup away.

“It’s okay, Satori.” Their mother reaches for the bowl.

Something miraculous happens: the bowl lifts from the ground and up onto the bedside table on its own. Ryo blinks and Satori gapes. It shouldn’t be possible— their mother never went to Astrum Academy and so she shouldn’t have learned the Esse Arts.

“M-Mom,” Ryo starts, “Did you just use musubi?”

Their mother frowns. “No, of course not.”

“But you just made that bowl float!” Satori cries.

“What are you talking about? I put the bowl on the table with my own hands.”

Satori and Ryo share a look. Perhaps they were too tired and imagining things?

They avoid talking about it further as their mother lies back down and tries to even her breathing out.

Together in silence, they spend the morning like that until their mother falls asleep again. Ryo and Satori tiptoe out of the room, bringing the empty dishes with them. They leave the dishes in the sink for now.

Satori smiles at the sunlight peeking out from the clouds. It’s rays cast a glow over her face. “I’m turning six today, so I’m officially the same age as you now.”

Ryo rolls his eyes. “I’ll be turning seven in a few weeks.”

She sticks her tongue out at him.

Ryo rummages through his pockets. “Here, happy birthday,” he says, taking out the mirror Mingyue gave to him to pass on. “I’ve been saving this for a while…since I came back from London, actually. It’s a gift from…well, both me and Mingyue, I guess.”

Satori takes the circular embroidered-disk into her hands, fingertips running across the phoenix and the dragon, inspecting it curiously. “Thanks. What is it?”

Ryo opens it from the round clasp. “Pocket mirror.”

When they peer at their reflection, however, it is replaced with a map of the land nearby, their location indicated by a tiny golden dot. A trail of gold light indicates a path.

Huh, Ryo blinks. Guess I didn’t need to worry about figuring out a route after all.

“Woah,” Satori breathes. “That’s amazing. This is musubi at work, isn’t it?”

Ryo nods. “Mingyue imbued it with her qi and it will protect you from danger as long as you keep it on you.”

Satori frowns at him. “What do you mean?”

Butterflies tickle his stomach. “While I went with Dad to London in the summer, I did a lot of thinking. But I didn’t give it to you right away because I wasn’t sure if I did the right thing… And when I came back and that time Dad exploded, I decided that you would have this on your birthday.”

“You still haven’t told me what exactly it is, Ryo.”

Ryo gulps. He looks away when he speaks. “Whenever Dad hits us, you tend to get hit more. The one time he exploded at me when we got back from London, I finally got to experience what you experienced all the time. See,” he pauses, his eyes flicking back to Satori who listens with a curious expression, “I get to escape to the Blackwoods, but you can’t escape to anywhere.”

Satori’s lip quivers but otherwise she is still.

“You have no choice and no escape. It’s not fair. So, if it ever becomes too much for you, follow the golden path that Mingyue mapped out for you and you can get to the Liu family. If you go by next Saturday, you’ll make it in time for the Lunar New Year and that’s when the Liu family scouts new members. I already discussed it with Mingyue and she’ll have a retainer wait until February—”

Satori hugs him, squeezes him real hard. “You’re an idiot.”

Ryo silently hugs her back.

“I’m not gonna leave, not as long as you and Mom are here. So thanks, but don’t worry about me.”

That’s impossible, Satori. Ryo sighs. “Okay, but at least you have a choice now.”

Satori pulls away, squeezing his cheeks into a smile. “No frowning on my birthday! Now let’s go outside so I can throw snowballs at your face!”

Their father comes home that evening and Ryo observes he does not brew medicine for their mother even after they’ve eaten dinner together. Instead, his father checks on their mother’s condition. After a few minutes in her room, he comes downstairs, mood seemingly improved. His father retires into his study and Satori similarly retires into her room, saying she will sleep early.

He doesn’t say anything about the waver in her voice, like she is about to cry. Half of him wants to beat himself up for making her cry. Maybe his gift was a terrible idea. It was overstepping. He was always overstepping. Overly observant. Overthinks. Over… everything.

Ryo lights the okiandon lantern in his own room, gazing up at the abyss of stars in the sky. The last time he looked at that sky through his windows— really looked —was in the summer when he and Satori had nearly gotten caught. She’d saved him back then too, taking a lashing in his place.

He rummages through his hanten coat’s pockets. It hangs in his closet, dry now from their early activities in the snow. He pulls a piece of parchment out: the parchment he’d copied from his father’s notes on possible ingredients for making the Blood of Asphodel. He never dared to let that list wander too far from him, lest his father discovers it.

But his heart thumps a little too loud tonight. His chest bursts with a tingling desire to act, so painful and restless that he doubts he’ll be able to sleep at all. He’s not sure if it’s because of the waver in Satori’s voice or because of her vow to not leave, but it has only stoked whatever strange fire burns in his gut. There’s an instinct, some intuition, some inkling of a thought.

I’ve missed something.

It rings loudly in his ears. Some pieces to solving the puzzle in his hands have already presented themselves, but he does not see.

This is the same intuition that warned him to keep Satori from going downstairs, that warned him something was off about Edward, that tells him Satori didn’t tell him something that happened between her and Mom while he and Dad were away in London. This intuition of his is something he knows he should listen to more because it has never led him astray.

Something is wrong.

He’s sure of it, and so, gripping the piece of paper tightly between his thumb and index fingers, he silently makes his way downstairs.

The door to his father’s study is open just a crack, thin flickering light from an okiandon lamp cast in a long thread against the floorboards and onto the walls. Ryo softly makes his way closer, trying to peer in. He hears voices inside, just like he did in the summer, and he knows it is his father talking with Lucifer.

“…made it just in time,” Lucifer comments. “Any later and I would have considered our deal null and void.”

“Yes, my Lord. I present to you a prototype of the Blood of Asphodel.”

Ryo carefully peeks into the bright room. His father’s study is a mess, notebooks and papers strewn everywhere. Vials and flasks litter the floors and on the tables are a few more vials containing pink-tinted concoctions of varying degrees. Some are dark enough to be red, like blood. Others are clear like water.

His gaze moves upward to see his father handing a taller man a vial of a very light pink liquid.

And he gets his first glimpse of Lucifer, an akuma, the demon of all demons— the incarnation of evil. His hair is white with a purity that transcends snow and blood-red eyes that drip of saccharine sins.

The faint pink liquid in the vial looks much darker, almost crimson against Lucifer’s unnaturally pale skin. No human could look like that and it is all Ryo needs to hold his breath in fear. His instincts tell him to run, but his intuition knows if he moves, he will be caught. So he watches with rapt attention as the Fallen inspects the liquid in the light.

Satisfied, Lucifer lowers the vial. “You said it is a prototype. How do you know that it works? And what are the side effects?”

His father bows lower. “The side effects on the human body are a weakened constitution, fevers, coughs, a distorted short-term memory, and the gradual loss of the senses with prolonged exposure.”

“And how do you know that it works?”

“Because subject A001 is both alive and subconsciously using Esse.”

Ryo frowns. Wait a minute…

“Esse?” Lucifer’s expression darkens and the air becomes suffocating for the briefest of moments as those red eyes glow. “I asked you to restore Aeon!”

His father kneels and kowtows his head against the ground. “It will work! With enough exposure to this, the ability to use Esse can be molded into Aeon!”

The ominous aura recedes and Ryo can breathe again. His legs wobble and it takes everything in him to not fall and reveal his presence.

“In its current state, it will kill a human and poison my kind to the brink of near death before we regain the power to use Aeon.” Lucifer walks in a circle, cornering his father on the ground. “Still, you have completed my basic ask and I will keep my promise to spare your children from continuing your work for as long as you are alive.”

“Thank you, my Lord.”

“But you have failed on one point.”

“My Lord?”

“You’ve failed to complete your mission in secrecy.” At that, Lucifer’s crimson eyes meet Ryo’s. Ryo stumbles back a step and then two.

His father turns around, eyes widening before his face contorts into fury again. Ryo trips and falls, clambering to his feet. But before he can run, his father drags him inside with a bruising grasp on his wrist. 

“Ryo!” He whispers in fury, and Ryo shuts his eyes as terror grips his body and mind. He wishes his father would just yell at him instead. It is far easier to deal with.

“Ryo, look at me,” his father continues low and dangerous. He blinks his eyes open reluctantly. “I have been a good father, Ryo. I have given you life, I have clothed you, fed you, and provided you with everything I could in this shitty life. Yes?”

Ryo’s lip trembles.

“I asked,” his father speaks through clenched teeth, the nasal undertones making Ryo shiver as his father’s hold on his wrists tighten. “Am I correct, Ryo?”

He nods, barely.

“And you repay me by being a useless son. You steal from me everyday by breathing. You have taken my youth, my money, my time, my freedom. Now, you spy on me.” His father smiles and it is crooked and wrong in all the ways Ryo dreamed up in his nightmares. “My daughter is more of a son than you.”

Ryo’s breathing quickens and his eyes burn with tears.

“Don’t fucking cry,” his father growls. He tries to stop but the tears come out anyways. His breaths come even faster now and his heart thumps with the lifeblood of fear. “Just remember you brought this on yourself.”

And there is pain. Nothing but pain around his neck. In the next moment, Ryo realizes he cannot breathe. His father, surely seeing red, has gone insane and the world has turned on its head. He claws desperately at his father’s big hands choking him against the tatami floor. He tries to cry out for help, but no sound registers in his ears. His gaze is turned upwards to the beams in the wooden ceiling and Lucifer’s amused red orbs gaze back down at him. 

It is wrong. Eerie. Twisted. Something gnarly grows there. It is peering into his soul, judging and weighing him on a shadowy scale. He feels claws enclose upon his heart, reaching to scratch his eyes out. The darkness clouds his vision, rips a hole wide open in his chest, and this time, he knows its name.

Despair.

He can no longer deny it, the feeling that he failed to identify so many moons ago, the one he refuses to acknowledge in every waking moment of his life. It spirals and spirals, spilling out of him like a black hole and it sucks every bit of life away from him. He feels his body slump, numb to the world…and cannot bring himself to care.

The last thing he hears is a sickening squelch.